C. Diff Infections Doubled between 2000 and 2005

From MSNBC:

"Cases of potentially deadly diarrheal infections jumped by more than 200 percent in the nation’s hospitals between 2000 and 2005, fueling new worries about the next bad bug.

Some 301,200 people contracted Clostridium difficile-associated disease — known as CDAD — in 2005, more than twice as many as previously counted, and 28,600 people died from the infection that year, according to a new report by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

That sharp spike follows a 74 percent increase in the number of CDAD cases recorded between 1993 and 2000. Overall, more than 2 million patients contracted the serious intestinal infection between 1993 and 2005, the report showed.

“It is the next major germ threat,” said Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York state who now heads the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths — RID — an agency that focuses on improving infection control in hospitals and health care settings.

The bacterium, commonly referred to as C. diff, is as worrisome as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a drug-resistant infection linked to more than 94,000 infections and nearly 19,000 deaths in the U.S. in 2005, McCaughey said."

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Looks like C. Diff is way out of control... Can't people keep hospitals clean these days???